FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to an apparatus for processing, recording and reproducing images and audio.
In known digital electronic cameras whose specifications conform to the still-video recording format, image and audio data is processed and recorded on a digital recording medium such as a hard disk or floppy disk.
In the conventional still-video recording format, the image data and audio data are each frequency-modulated and recorded on separate tracks. In the audio track, a field for recording the track channel number of the associated image track (video track) is provided in a control track and it is so arranged that an annotation (identifying information), regarding a specific image can be recorded at the same time.
However, the following problems are encountered in the conventional digital electronic camera of the type described above:
(1) With the still-video recording format, a video track desired to be referred to can be designated from an audio track but an associated audio track cannot be designated from a video track. Accordingly, in order to determine the relationship between audio data and image data, all tracks on a still-video floppy disk serving as the recording medium must be retrieved, all of the audio tracks must be played back and the video track desired to be referred from the audio track must be found. Since this inevitably requires an enormous amount of time, this approach involves considerable waste and is not realistic.
(2) Only one image can be referred to from an audio track. In a case where it is desired to refer to a plurality of images, therefore, one item of audio cannot be made to correspond to the plurality of images in common. Accordingly, if it is desired to annotate a plurality of images under a common concept by voice, this cannot be accomplished at one time.
(3) In order to record audio data on a recording medium, a large storage capacity is necessary. As a consequence, recording a simple annotation regarding an image on an audio track is inappropriate in terms of cost.
These problems relating to the conventional digital electronic camera arise not only in digital electronic cameras but also generally in apparatus that process audio data and image data.